“Yes, yes,” shrieked the blood-mad avengers. “The Yellow Bloodhound must close his mouth against us. The prisoners must die.”
“Then let them die!” hissed Jules Bardue, and in a lower tone he added to the guard: “They might escape between here and the big band. But they’ll never find the girl, never!”
With bloodthirsty eagerness the savages, Ojibwas, Ottawas, Pottawatomies and Miamis, headed by Little Wolf, made preparations for the torture. A party brought a quantity of stones from the creek, and upon them the devils proceeded to blunt their knives, that the captives’ skin might be torn from their bodies with the most excruciating torture.
The giant looked calmly upon the devilish preliminaries, and a shudder stole to young Somerville’s heart. A sad expression wreathed the trader’s features, telling that he thought not of himself, but of his daughter.
“We’re in for it now, I guess,” muttered the hunter. “What! Bob, first? No! no! spare the boy; take me first. I’ve killed the most ov yer dog-devils. I’ve scalped full twenty ov yer chiefs!”
But the flayers paid no attention to the old hunter; they cut young Somerville’s bonds, and proceeded to strip his clothes from his body.
“What a pretty skin!” exclaimed a young brave, striking the scout’s breast with his knife. “Ha! the red blood comes; it flows like Segowatha’s flowed.”
He sunk the point of his knife beneath our hero’s skin, but no cry of pain followed the brutal action; and suddenly, stripped to the waist, the youth found himself jerked to his feet.
Two young braves held him, and amid the flourish of knives and shouts of vengeance, they turned to the death-tree.
“Shall I die without an effort for life?” muttered Somerville; “die when I might live to snatch Kate from the Bloodhound’s jaws? Never!”